European Parliament Committee Adopts Position on ‘Platform-to-Business’ Regulation

Brussels, BELGIUM — The European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) adopted its draft report on the ‘platform-to-business’ Regulation. The text will form the basis of the European Parliament’s position in the upcoming trilogue negotiations with the European Commission and Council. The Council reached political agreement on the file at the end of November.

The P2B Regulation was proposed by the European Commission in April this year. The proposal seeks to ensure greater transparency and predictability in the commercial relationships between online intermediation services and their business users. Search engines also fall in the scope of the Regulation, but in a more limited manner.

In sharp contrast to EU Member States, the European Parliament decided to go beyond transparency obligations, regulate certain business practices, and expand the scope of the proposal to cover ‘ancillary operating systems’.

“Regulating business practices makes little sense in a one-size-fits-all proposal. The Commission proposed a transparency-based approach for very good reasons. As Member States clearly do not want any regulatory experiments, we hope that the result of trilogue negotiations will be as workable for online companies as possible.”

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